


those who favour fire

by mistrali



Category: Emelan - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-16
Updated: 2020-03-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:47:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23165722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mistrali/pseuds/mistrali
Summary: "Did you do that, boy?"in Mbau, a boy's magic goes awry earlier than planned.
Comments: 14
Kudos: 10





	those who favour fire

_Temple to Sanhe of the Maize, Sikobiti Village, Cape of Rubies, Mbau, 996 K.F._

“The Diouf family, mchowni. Their little boy has the fever.”

“I will pray for him,” intoned the mchowni, from his seat on the brand-new temple dais, just below the altar. “Take these herbs to ease his pain.” Firash sprinkled the incense onto the censer, which lit itself. The mchowni passed the supplicant a small packet of herbs.

“And Mele Thiaw, mchowni, wishes for her daughter to be a scholar in Newpark City.”

“I will pray for her,” droned the mchowni again.

As the day wore on, the mchowni gave out packet after packet of herbs, or ash, or dust, according to the wishes of the supplicant. Firash was just thinking longingly of midday when the censer went out.

Light flared in the hearth: incandescent, white-hot. Firash jerked and only just kept himself from yelling aloud.

“What was that? Did you do that, boy?”

“I don’t know, mchowni. Looked like...“

Lightning, striking inside the protective circle, leaving scorch marks on the altar. Lightning out of a clear sky, in the middle of the day.

“It m-m-must be a vengeful spirit, mchowni... an omen…”

“Are you _suggesting_ , Firash, that my protective circle is defective?”

“No, mchowni. B- but the spirits, mchowni, and the gods... they don’t like...” and here the hapless Firash trailed off. He’d been going to say that the spirits took a dim view of those who stole magic. But death by Shurri Firesword’s lightning whips was preferable to whatever the mchowni might have in store for him if he so much as mentioned those particular rumours.

The mchowni raised his staff and shouted a word.

Nothing happened for a count of five.

Then the fire whooshed ten feet high. The air boomed and the stone roof crumpled, as though struck under a hammer. The temple rang with microtones, a hundred thousand harmonies, little flares of metal clashing on metal. Mchowni and apprentice collapsed, dead before they hit the ground. And twenty miles away, at the outskirts of the village, the Dioufs’ house erupted into flames.

*******

_Two Weeks Later_

The mchowni was buried in great state; fifty mourners turned out to beat drums, wail, paint their faces white and red (for violence and death) and yellow (for magic), and carry his coffin into the centre of the village.

He was healthy for it, they all said. A great mage, and his life could be snuffed out like that. What hope was there for the rest of them?

The Diouf family and their neighbours the Mhosas were also buried, in the common way. People murmured how strange it was, two separate fires starting on the same day. Such a thing had not happened in living memory, but the villagers put it down to a freak accident, divine whim. The new mchowni was a good man, a young man from a respectable family, honest as the day was long. He made offerings to the gods five times a week (the old mchowni had made a scant three) and grew their trade with other villages. People murmured, now that the old mchowni was dead, that he had been rather rapacious with spending, that he had taken more than his share of grant-maize from the villagers.

**Author's Note:**

> Frostpine is the boy with the fever; Firash is an OC. 
> 
> The ‘lightning’ was meant to be white heat. I had it in my head that wee!Frostpine’s magic went berserk because his ‘fever’ was actually his body’s attempt to fight the mchowni’s draining. That, or (more plausibly) his body was drawing on reserves it didn’t have to fight the fever, and it drew from the mchowni’s wellspring because all that power was technically Frostpine’s. To be honest, this entire fic is just an excuse to give the mchowni a more fitting death.


End file.
